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January 8, 2014

The challenge was to make several pouches for an assortment of board
game dice. The pouches would be given away as tokens to fellow gamer friends.
The options for the material to use were paper, netting, suede, felt, or any
kind of fabric that would serve the purpose. Nothing too fancy; after all, the
pouch just needed to hold seven regular-sized dice.

After pulling out a number of drawers of materials I could use, I remembered that I had scrap leather from an old jacket I bought at a
garage sale. It’s genuine leather that has natural wear and distress. And even
though the scrap pieces are relatively small sections, they would be just fine for
the size of the pouches. This was what I had been waiting for -- the chance to recycle/repurpose that old leather jacket!

I went ahead and made a prototype – two sewn-together panels with holes
for a pair of drawstrings. It came out really nice!

Because the scrap leather had been in storage, I decided to give each
section a good cleaning. We keep a bottle of leather cleaning and polishing
solution for our boots, bags, and other leather goods – I put it to really good
use!

After the clean-up and polish, I traced the pouch panel pattern on the
leather. Because the leather’s wear patterns were not uniform, I made sure that
the paired panels came from the same swatch or were at least similar in
discoloration. While scissors were good for the panels, the rotary cutter was most
efficient for cutting the drawstrings.

Punching the holes was next.

Then I just sewed the panels together, smooth side in, and pushed the seam
to flip the panels smooth side out. It’s with projects like this that I’m glad
I have a heavy duty sewing machine.

What I like about leather is you don’t need to worry about the edges
fraying -- construction of the pouches was quick and trouble-free.

What took the most time was threading the drawstrings. A crochet hook
would help, but I discovered that a pair of tweezers made the job pretty easy.

And here are the leather pouches, ready to be filled with dice. Mission
accomplished.